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Roll of dice to decide fate of thousands of British pupils
Thousands of children must take part in random lotteries for school places in a government attempt to break a middle-class stranglehold on the best schools.
- By Matthew Moore, The Telegraph Group Limited
- Published: 23:06 February 21, 2009
London: Thousands of children must take part in random lotteries for school places in a government attempt to break a middle-class stranglehold on the best schools.
Schools in a quarter of council areas are allocating places by lottery or "fair banding" - in which the school uses test results to deliberately select a proportion of pupils of poor ability.
The move could cause difficulties for affluent families who have dominated successful schools by buying houses within their catchment areas, often paying a premium of tens of thousands of pounds.
Last year, Brighton became the first area to allocate places at all oversubscribed schools through lotteries after government reforms gave councils and schools the power to do so.The Daily Telegraph has found that lotteries and fair banding are in widespread use across the country. At least one of the methods is being used by state secondary schools in a quarter of the 150 council areas with responsibility for education across England.
This means that up to 150,000 pupils applying for places this year could effectively have their futures decided "by the roll of a dice". Critics said that the methods amounted to social engineering and threatened misery for many middle-class families. Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, said the Tories would prevent local authorities from enforcing lotteries in future, calling them an "unsatisfactory" way of assigning places.
"The real problem is the lack of good schools," he said. "Far too many parents are denied a chance to educate their children in high quality schools."
Robert McCartney, the head of the National Grammar Schools Association, said: "There is something mildly offensive about a child's future being decided by nothing more than the roll of a dice."
Margaret Morrissey, of the campaign group Parents Outloud, said the increasing use of lotteries was evidence that the Government was going back on its pledge to offer parents more choice.
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